Summary
The “triangular thread,” a term used by a member of the Palestine Diamond Manufacturers’ Association for the three-armed, national-based coalition of ideology and interest that predominated in Yishuv life: the Zionist institutions, the Palestine Manufacturers’ Association, and the Labor movement (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.107).
Details
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Its three arms were the Zionist institutions that ran the Yishuv, led by the Jewish Agency and Mapai (for the diamond industry, the Department of Trade and Industry, usually in the hands of the liberal General Zionists Party); the PMA, the loose umbrella organization of Jewish industrialists; and the Labor movement, led by Mapai and the Histadrut, which since 1933 also controlled the Jewish Agency (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.107).
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Zionist state building held the triad together: the Jewish Agency ran the Zionist Movement’s affairs in Palestine, the PMA cooperated closely with it and mobilized industry to national causes, and the Histadrut provided the social basis of the project, manning settlements and controlling and organizing the labor market (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.108).
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Its most significant aspect was the understanding that private capital, capital owners and individual entrepreneurs were free to operate, but at the same time submissive to the Zionist agenda — a variant of national-capitalism in which maximization of profit cohabited with contributing to the Zionist social good (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.108).
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The diamond industry challenged the thread: the PDMA was not a PMA member until 1943, the Histadrut could not control the industry and its union presence materialized only partially, and the manufacturers sought freedom of economic action and institutional autonomy under British auspices (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.107-110).
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De Vries argues the diamond industry signaled a wider challenge to the Histadrut’s hegemony in the Jewish industrial sector and practically to the entire system and understanding at the heart of the triangular thread (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.116).
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The Histadrut’s conduct of the June 1942 general strike attempted to educate the manufacturers and the PDMA to the triangular thread’s norms of consensual industrial relations, neutral arbitration and Histadrut-Mapai hegemony, and after the strike the PDMA veered to acquiescence with the thread by affiliating to the Palestine Manufacturers’ Association and accepting the Yishuv cost-of-living system (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.173-175).
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In the March 1944 general strike, the shared economic nationalism around which the Jewish Agency arbitrators sought to weave an understanding was practically a reflection of the logic of the triangular thread; the strike’s settlement deepened the industry’s rapprochement with the Zionist institutions (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.190-191).
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Between autumn 1943 and summer 1944 the industry softened its antagonism toward the thread — using Zionist institutions for politics in London and for arbitration in the factories — as trust in the PDMA’s leadership weakened (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.198).
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The notion resurfaced in the 1946 crisis: in October 1946 the PDMA, the unions and Jewish Agency representatives formed a committee on the collective agreement whose members were drawn from the Yishuv’s financial and banking establishment, reflecting the industry’s integration into the Zionist institutions’ decision-making frameworks — what began in 1939 as rift and enmity had come full circle (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.234-235).